


It's Beyond Me

by orphan_account



Category: Phantom Tollbooth - Norton Juster (ill. Jules Feiffer), Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Bad Puns, Crossover, Gen, Poetry, Wordplay, Yuletide 2011
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2011-12-20
Updated: 2011-12-20
Packaged: 2017-10-27 14:47:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,895
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/296993
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>A watchdog out of his depth needs help from people out of another world to solve crime.<br/>Related in doggerel with no meter, dubious Reason and the occasional slant Rhyme.</p>
            </blockquote>





	It's Beyond Me

**Author's Note:**

  * For [automaticdoor](https://archiveofourown.org/users/automaticdoor/gifts).



> ETA: Sherlock canon knowledge not necessary. :D

"Boring," Sherlock said, "However so boring," of the textbooks so dry  
The least flashes of his genius could have ignited their pages.  
He was then a boy of eleven years, acid denials, and curt goodbyes  
Prone to daydreaming and distraction and theatrical rages.  
Iris, born for less time, with light temper and smile ever so wry,  
Sherlock's aunt thrice removed's granddaughter, refused to engage  
Her cousin in his tantrums. "If so," she said, "then whyever why  
Read them if they please you as if a bacterium near bacteriophages?"  
He provided some retort, I'm sure, cutting, one well thought out.  
But let us move from family squabbles and how they usually came about—

To events more wrenching than the endless saga of bored Sherlock  
Misjudging the cousin his equal, to one caught in a land imaginary,  
Knowledge he had wandered forever and always: the dog best known as Tock.  
For while Tock kept time, every time, in the hands he'd always carried,  
He was doomed to keep time for everything. Quite a stumbling block  
It was to hold all alarms, all sentences, all in his limited memory.  
He often forgot his bed and bones rushing from one to two o'clock  
And while deadlines never escaped, thieves snuck up on him unwary  
Running circles and squares around him with their dastardly schemes.  
Do you see the scene of the crime? The impetus for Sherlock's dreams?

Tock prayed to furry powers that answered him true with fuzzy logic  
But be time saved or wasted or killed, there was never time to lose;  
Tock begged those with the control sticks, traveled about double quick  
But he was too honest a creature, whose art was not in the schmooze,  
Needing meanings, essences, understanding, instead of tatters and tricks  
Disguising perpetrators of abuse. He needed to know who to accuse.  
From Reality Sherlock and Iris (Rhea, Metis, Nike), best of their ilk,  
Entered to make ends meet, to find clues, to see through criminal ruse.  
Tock drew them beyond the tollbooth through the Figurative Wishing Well  
(Which grants wishes, wishes you well, and wishes itself as well).

"Tock," it said, from its heart of stone, "A friend from a distant place  
Near to Justice has come. Pay my debt?" "I will," said Tock, "Just say  
What to gift, for there is no time like the present." "You will chase  
After Jujereggzecushunner, blind leading the less blind, who each day  
Trades eyes for eyes." "Why, to clean up crime, must he my sight erase?"  
The well was silent, but the man showed eyeballs green or brown or grey  
None quite the same size as Tock's own, and made Tock his eyes replace.  
"Disputing me; protesting they aren't one-size-fits-all; such foul play  
Is already two strikes. Do you want a third? Why start such strife?  
Why, in a town near where I'm from, dog, they want a life for a life."

Tock found in a fresh pair of eyes hope of stopping Wisdom's wrongs.  
Iris looked at the bright sunshine and rolling hills of the land  
And thought she, a child always ready for surprises, would go along  
With the change of scenery. But Sherlock, momentarily losing command  
Of his surroundings, ignored her. "Why should we here our stays prolong?"  
"You've got nothing here of interest." Trotting toward his helping hand,  
Tock jumped with them to Conclusions, for he was forced to tag along.  
"I am glad as can be for you to come meet our new residents firsthand,"  
Canby said. "They are as tight families as can be, my dearest guests."  
Sherlock muttered about powers of deductive reasoning he possessed.

But these families lived on the jagged rocks of Conclusions' shore  
Perilous to newcomers who hadn't passed through Premises first.  
"Here's the Ad clan!" Canby explained, opening a back door  
Into the courtyard of the Fallacies, a family quite diverse.  
(Tock sniffed curiously at one slimeball that resembled an ignorant yam.  
YOU CANNOT PROVE EVERYONE WILL ESCAPE THE ISLAND, its sign proclaimed.  
Another which flapped at the trio threateningly was named Nauseam.  
EVERYONE ELSE HERE HAS ALREADY TRIED ESCAPING, it yelled, unashamed.  
Another declared, I WILL MAKE YOU EAT YOUR WORDS. LOVE, BACULUM.  
And the last sign: I AM HOMINEM, YOU MUST NOT LEAVE! it exclaimed.)  
"Sherlock, you mustn't say things that you have no evidence for,"  
Iris (Maia) chided, regaining her footing as the Fallacies dispersed  
And the whisper of an adventure Tock had half-forgot heretofore  
Reminded him how to jump back, or jump the track, and reimmerse  
Them in the land of the wise. "Think why you're here," he thought,  
And told them of the danger with which his world was fraught.

No sooner were they on a road (no one questioned why _that_ was there)  
Than Sherlock piped up again, only slightly chagrined, "Dream!"  
Iris (Leto) translated, with the air of one inured, "My cousin declares  
That we have dreamt into here, and wants his involvement in this scheme."  
Tock thought about it— he was quite a sensible dog, outside this affair.  
Sherlock, frustrated, waved about him. "Do you hold me in low esteem?  
I can read the weather's strangeness in the inversion in a pinch of air;  
The colours here are dull as ditchwater—" glee setting his eyes agleam.  
"Wouldn't it be more amusing to solve problems as each comes to light?"  
"I'd rather find the roots." Iris found firm ground under her a delight.

Tock agreed with her, for he had other duties he wanted complete soon.  
Sherlock rounded on the easier target. "You've chosen to call me in  
Because you wouldn't know whether to wind a watch or bark at the moon1.  
Do you all lack something crucial in the brains or otherwise within?"  
Tock scratched under his chin. "Some are all ears, or all skin and bone,  
Or all heart. Better the head of a dog than the tail of a lion,"  
He added, particularly proud of this last opinion, however picayune.  
"Thankfully your fellow denizens are not all faces, then," Iris (Phoebe) put in,  
"For I prefer recognising different creatures. Could we go forward,  
Dear cousin, to solving the crimes to which Tock originally referred?"

(The problem with the clash of two all tenacity with one all mind  
Is that it can take  
seconds,

  


minutes and hours,

  


nights and sennights,

  


fortnights and months,

  


common years and tropical years,

  


Gregorian years and leap years,

  


exoseconds and googleplexes2

  


for them to finally become similarly inclined.  
Only a few of the minutes passed in this case before the arguments were exhausted,  
But even with the wisest of disputers cosmological decades have been lost.)

Having spent time and time again considering his land's untimely woes,  
Tock said— trying for proper gruffness and barely touching solemnity—  
"We could start with Motive and Means, fallen in the dark below,  
Slithering away from us who chase them, laughing at us with pity,  
Never allowing us culprits to impose on or depose or oppose or expose.  
I have gone before," although he had forgotten the details nitty-gritty.  
Sherlock cut him a sideways glance but Iris (Themis) said, "Let us go  
If you are so certain," much subtler with sarcasm and with dignity.  
Tock wound his clock. To Sherlock: "Time and tide wait for no man."  
To Tock: "You two go, then; I shall formulate my own game plan."

Iris (Eirene) shrugged. Off to the Sea of Knowledge they trundled together  
Where the waters ran up fjords and down to the depths of dark minds,  
Evading dragons surfacing uncharted waters and arguing at the whether  
Of weather situations possible, avoiding pirates with boats designed  
To skim Information from the passing and spread it to local dwellers  
Lest their mission be forecast by those of a persuasion malign.  
To eat they fished for compliments in their descent toward the nether,  
To drink they had but drops of the ocean flavored with its brine,  
For Tock was becoming a salty dog, and Iris her salt quite worth  
In the search for Means and Motive, the demons they needed to unearth.

Onward they were hurried by the Whales of Misery singing under their boat  
And the Lynx of Causality stalking them along the shoreline, a haunt  
Who refused to let them see her at all, cackling from somewhere remote.  
"We'll see you in the dock," Iris (Aella) shouted, Tock adding a paw swat  
And "I'll make sure you serve time!" righteousness in his furry throat.  
They passed the Just Desert, the God's Dam, lobster pots, melting pots,  
A euphony of chromatic sounds and creatures, so many they couldn't devote  
Their attention to any in particular, so wondrous they almost forgot  
The reason they were falling downward, like falling into a daze  
Lulled by dream logic touched only by the slightest air of malaise.

So when they sailed to the end of the world, for time does sail,  
Tock's memory, long prone to limitation, had almost lost the zero hour.  
Only Iris (Mnemosyne), her eyes flicking to some internal schedule, prevailed  
Over the blurring of their quest. "Why and how is it that we scour  
Wisdom in the searching, Tock?" and he remembered, and he inhaled,  
For the demons appeared before them. "Forgotten your hunt du jour?  
It is so easy for us to disguise ourselves, to from the route derail  
When we need to, or to shoot in the dark, or to exercise the powers  
That be in our favor." Tock thought of his duty and how best to play for time,  
While Iris (Anthea) said, archly, "Sew up your mouths, for a stitch in time saves nine,"

For she was beginning to understand the way dream logic stitched together reality and the way  
It was sometimes more important to say something provocative than something necessarily right.  
"Sherlock," Anthea muttered, "Why do you never show up when you might actually display  
Your usual talents so you shine attention to things out of sight, make them come to light?"  
They were at the end of the world, and she thought further about things meeting halfway  
And the end of the world meeting— there was only one end of the world in sight—  
And if her cousin had also gone to the end of the world to find the Means to ends,  
Gone to the end of the world, chased a singular end, to escape Motive's portends,  
Then the world's end should be not singular, but instead there should be no end,  
And there was nowhere to descend to, to which one could not also ascend,  
And even up the river without a paddle it was still possible to bring the house down  
And she and Tock and Sherlock could lay down the law, regain the upper hand,  
Tie up loose ends, put the demons at their wits' end, meet ends meet in the land—

The dream collapsed inward and opened outward, the sea pouring over everything she could see  
As the world knit itself back to roundness and Sherlock kicked her awake from sleep.

 

 

1 This dilemma seems to present itself more to American than British English speakers, but let them argue the toss instead of us doing so.  
2 To say it takes "googleplexes" for Sherlock and Tock to agree is like saying it takes three to break up a fight. We grant driver's licenses and licenses to print money; why not temporal license?

**Author's Note:**

> From a short break from the originally prose-based Yuletide fic, this ended up cannibalizing my entire vacation. Lack of internet/a rhyming dictionary was very helpful in this regard *g* Reverse tollbooth time dilation!
> 
> Dear recipient: If you dislike crossovers, I'm really sorry and I'll gladly write you a NYR fic. Please, please let me know.
> 
> All kinds of feedback are welcome and appreciated.


End file.
